It’s still too much for Helen Hernandez to think about. She cries quietly when she talks about the man she helped raise, her 22-year-old grandson, Jerry Hernandez III. He was shot in the head in front of their San Jose home Sunday.

His 6-year-old brother broke the news, she recalled.

“He ran in and woke me up,” the 85-year-old woman said. “He told me that Jerry was in the street, that Jerry couldn’t get up, that he thought Jerry was dead.”

She didn’t believe him. Her grandson had been in trouble in the past, she said, but he had been working through a court program and had a met a nice girl.

She told her younger grandson to pray with her. And then walked into the living room where her husband told her that their grandson was lying in the street.

San Jose police, responding to 911 calls of gunshots in the area, went to the East San Jose home near Jamaica Way and Orlando Drive about 12:40 a.m. Sunday and found a man dead on the street, Sgt. Nick Muyo said.

Muyo would not confirm Monday whether the man was Jerry Hernandez. But his grandmother said it was him.

“I didn’t want to believe it,” she said. “Until I went outside and saw his red T-shirt.”

Hernandez’s death is the city’s 14th reported slaying this year.

News in the neighborhood spread quickly, Helen Hernandez said. The family’s home was soon flooded with friends and neighbors coming to share their grief, and a memorial sprang up on the curb outside. Beer bottles sat near candles, and flowers. Photos of Jerry Hernandez, smiling, were sitting on a chair.

On the street, next to two traffic cones, someone had spray-painted “R.I.P. Lil’ Creeper,” referring to Hernandez’s other name – the one he was charged under in connection with three separate crimes in Santa Clara County Superior Court.

His grandmother said Hernandez was doing better. His grandfather would take him to his court-appointed program every morning and pick him up every night. The last time he was in court, Helen Hernandez said, the judge had praised his progress.

The little boy who loved baseball, food and cooking, his father Jerry Hernandez II said, was turning his life around.

Saturday night, Hernandez’s grandmother called him before she went to bed. She asked him when he’d be home.

He told her soon.

A cousin said Hernandez then walked two friends home to make sure they arrived safely. A few houses from his own, which he shared with his younger brother, grandparents and father, he was shot.

The last words Helen Hernandez spoke to her grandson still ring in her ears.

In a friend's dining room in central Los Angeles, 27 hours before she will announce she's running for president of the United States, I ask self-help author and motivational speaker Marianne Williamson to perform a miracle. Until a few weeks ago, I didn't know Williamson was planning to join the Democratic presidential primary class of 2020.